Davis, California is a nice college town, with a small but vibrant downtown, filled with an assortment of restaurants and cute shops, not all of which are selling bicycle paraphernalia. But Davis does define itself by its mode of travel, its bike logo is prominently displayed on everything, including trash cans. The Amtrak station is just at the edge of downtown, and I had a relatively straight, two mile walk from the station to the West Village on the opposite side of town and campus, across the freeway, to give a talk at ITS-Davis.

West Village is designed to be carbon neutral (sort of, ignoring all the carbon-exporting that we all do), and is this modernist, TOD like set up, where the storefronts are replaced by research offices, while apartments are upstairs. But it is really more Bicycle-oriented development than transit oriented. The campus is transected by the Sprocket Bikeway.

I was not entirely clear how to get from Amtrak to the building, so being a modern person with a GPS-enabled cellphone and without a paper map, I attempted to use the tools at my disposal. For the record, Apple Maps wanted to direct me to somewhere outside Los Angeles, as the new West Village streets were not in their database. Google Maps was more accurate, but pedestrian directions are still wonky, especially since the bikeway is not well signed. Both apps leave a lot to be desired from the UI perspective.

My Flickr photos are here

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